Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device.
Background Art
Conventionally, as is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-139461, a semiconductor device is known, which has an appearance with a plurality of leads extending in parallel on one side of a mold resin body. This type of appearance is adopted among common integrated circuits. Manufacturing steps thereof generally include die bonding and wire bonding of a semiconductor chip on a lead frame, sealing of the lead frame with mold resin and then lead cutting whereby the lead frame is cut.
Semiconductor elements provided with a current sense function are well known and power semiconductor modules incorporating such semiconductor elements are becoming widespread. There is also a scheme that detects a current by detecting a main current instead of using a current sense function. A technique is also known which provides these two current detection functions in one power semiconductor module. With this type of power semiconductor module, a user can select and use one of the two current detection functions.
The power semiconductor module is mounted on a mounting substrate and used as a component together with other parts for various electric circuits such as an inverter circuit. Given the above-described alternative of the current detection scheme, a user must prepare a mounting substrate suitable for the user selected current detection scheme.
More specifically, using the current sense function requires a mounting substrate to be prepared in which a sense resistor is arranged at an appropriate position. Furthermore, detecting a main current requires a mounting substrate to be prepared in which a shunt resistor is arranged at an appropriate position.
Although the above-described power semiconductor module increases the range of alternatives for the user to choose a current detection scheme, the user is required to design and prepare an appropriate mounting substrate. Therefore, there is still room for improvement from the standpoint of user convenience.
Moreover, when the above-described alternative of the current detection scheme is given, the burden of wiring work that should be done by the user increases. As a result, miswiring may occur. Focusing on this problem, the present inventor came to discover a semiconductor device capable of detecting miswiring.